Shall be Mine
by mayachain
Summary: Young Mr Eames embarks on a quest that will take eleven years. Contains pre-slash. Warnings for implied past abuse, consensual underage sex and talk of addictions.


**Shall be mine**

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About the fifth time Mother starts in on her lecture about how _people will always leave you_, thirteen-year-old Eames decides that he is going to prove her wrong.

"They will always let you down, no matter what you do," she says with her hand hovering over the drink she prepares for herself each night but never actually touches. "You might think you're the best of friends, but in the end, they aaaalll just want something from you. All of them, darling. Maybe it will be your money, or some connection through your family, or even a skill – you _do_ have many skills, darling..."

This is two months after his father has gone to jail for some political scandal that Eames is too young to understand, and he is two days away from starting at a new, exclusive school. _I still have money,_ Mother had said when he had asked her about it, _And I believe the best for you is to just get away from it all._

Eames doesn't want to go, doesn't want to leave his mates at his old school. Okay, so maybe they're not really talking to him now. Maybe they _are_ all looking at him like he did something wrong, and no, that's not fair, but really, surely it'll blow over, since it _has_ to be all their parent's fault?

"You'll see," he tells her, half to soothe her, half a challenge. "You'll see. I'll make the greatest friends the world has ever seen."

Mother just smiles sadly at him and pours his father's thirty-year-old Scotch down the sink.

During his first year at his new school, Eames is happy. A few of the older students and some of the teachers raise their eyebrows when they learn his name, but Eames thinks they all must have parents or spouses with scandalous secrets as well, because whatever it was that got his father convicted doesn't seem to matter, here. Here, his year-mates invite him to join in on all sorts of games, like his old mates have stopped to, and it's both a relief and great fun. His room-mate doesn't even take the piss when he has a nightmare one night and calls for Mother.

By the time the third year rolls around, however, he has discovered that all is not gold in this shiny new world after all. The blokes he hangs out with don't want his money – Mother is not the richest parent by far – and they do not want his connections ("Yet," Mother warns him during their vacation it Italy). They all do crave the protection of his easy-going nature, though. Eames has a gift to sweet-talk their teachers, can bail just about anyone out of trouble. Will, who can't wrap his head around foreign languages but trades essays for maths homework, and Stephen from the year above them even want his body. Eames doesn't mind giving it to them for a short while because it feels bloody _brilliant,_ but...

He must admit to Mother that he has not yet found the kind of friendship he envisioned.

He tells himself it doesn't matter, really. His classmates and he get on well enough, and if none of them are _real special friends,_ then fine. Eames'll just have to wait a bit longer before that friend – after four years, he is ready to settle with just one – comes along.

Eames discovers that he may be good at lying, but he is not good at lying to himself.

One night, when his and Marcus' room is packed with people and all of them are spectacularly illicitly drunk, he decides to give a name to this impudent person that flat-out refuses to show up in his life.

"And he shall return in times of great need," he recites to the great hilarity of the others. Sadly, they have no idea what he's on about.

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A few weeks before Eames graduates, his father is released from prison. Mother is overjoyed, judging by the animation in her voice whenever she calls her son. She's taking Father back, speaks of little but her preparations for and the eventual arrival of her husband. Apparently, when preaching about the universal constant of people leaving, she left a tiny room for spouses being an exception.

By then, Eames _does_ understand what his father went to prison for. The fond memories he has of the man are not enough to turn it into something he can condone.

As expected, he aces most of his exams, surpasses everyone's expectations regarding maths thanks to Will. He speaks to Mother on the phone every evening and exchanges the odd word with Eames senior. Then he leaves takes the only path he can think of to make her proud (leaves) while staying well away from home: He _(leaves)_ joins the military.

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During basic training and beyond, Eames discovers that he is quite skilled with a gun. He is faster than many (but not most) of his mates, and the quick mind that ran rings around the faculty always seems to find the quickest (if not most efficient) way through whatever scenario their superiors throw them into. There are a few tensions whenever instructors like Bottony have difficulties with what they tend to call Eames' "bloody cheek," but his salutes are perfect and so is his marksmanship. He comes up with better strategies than even Brigadier Warton could have originally thought of, and he charms them, and he charms them, and he charms them.

At first, there's an easy camaraderie between Cadet Eames and the men and women training beside him, with him, but as Mother points out more than once, "That's a thin line you are walking, darling": If he's too competent, all they're going to see are his skills; if he pretends he's less competent than he wants to show the higher-ups he can be, they have no chance of seeing the real Eames. For all that Ian Horowitz slurs, "You're the bestest, bestest, bestest ever, Eton" - the nickname the price Eames had to pay for admitting where he got his education – the bestest Eames is thoroughly buggered, the damage is done.

By the time he tells Mother the news of his umpteenth promotion, his peers like him, speak highly of him. The orders he gives make his unit look good, he pulls one or two arses through training, and he makes them laugh. Most days end with Eames walking toward his bed, high on competent, funny people's jokes, one or two arms slung over his shoulders.

It does not compare to the notion he still has, can't seem to give up, of someone who can see inside of him and know him, someone whose gaze negates the need to pretend. Neither casual touches nor intimate exploration of Jon Mills (nearly a doctor, mind full of medical knowledge) or Miranda Bernstein (the lady to call when diffusing bombs) are enough to stop the dreams. It's no longer about the challenge a naïve thirteen-year-old issued to his mother. Eames wants, needs someone he can hug without reservation whenever he feels like it. He dreams of hugs that go on for hours and are never taken for anything more or less than Eames has to give.

His superiors keep noticing him, keep moving him up the ranks and commenting on his imagination. Part of Eames is wary (suspicious) of all the attention he garners. Another part, a perhaps ("Definitely," Mother's voice says) foolish but, if Eames is honest, _bigger_ part is continuously excited about it. Before he knows it, he has four years of experience behind him and Brigadier Warton himself is talking to Eames _in person_ and he is on his way to Paris.

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Professor Miles is a man Eames comes to like and respect a lot, even if he is far too close to his own parents' age to become someone Eames could call a friend. If Eames is a little reluctant to let the Professor's assistant slide the needle into his arm the first time, he soon discovers a whole new world. The rules of physics don't apply any more, not to the buildings around him, to the people he meets, not to Eames himself.

Miles' teaching assistant is also his son-in-law. His architect's eyes see through most of Eames' acts easily enough, but he is too focused on his research, his lovely wife and his newborn child to be what Eames has not stopped craving. Dominic Cobb wants Eames for skills Eames didn't know he had, and he is upfront about it.

Eames likes that about him.

The lovely wife, Miles' daughter whom Eames only meets a few times, comes closest. Her eyes seem to see right into Eames' soul, to draw him out of himself until there is no more hiding. At the same time, she is dangerously intent on studying the world of dreams beyond its property as a tool. Mallorie Cobb never quite heeds the Professor's warnings to "Take a step back, my dear," which, for Eames, turns out to be the most important advice he was ever given.

On a professional level, the assignment to the PASIV project is the greatest thing that has ever happened to Eames in all of time. There are no limits for his imagination, for his creativity here.

On a more personal level, it's the most brilliant discovery since Stephen kissed him and pushed him down onto Marcus' bed. Sometimes, though, Eames looks at his own projections and wonders what it would take, how much life, how much affection he could will into them. That's when he remembers Mother pouring Scotch down the sink evening after evening and deliberately steps off a window ledge. He thanks the heavens that the Professor ranks above Eames' own superiors in the chain of command, and lets himself be warmed by Miles' kind, understanding smile when he tells him, "I need a little time."

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The man's name is Neil McCormick. He wears his uniform as if it were a suit, and whenever the dream allows it, he wears his suits like armour. He knows his way around damn near every weapon there is. Granted, almost every soldier Eames knows has learned how to (poor Collins, luckily he'd had Eames to charm him into a place in administration), and Eames is entitled to pride in that department himself, but no-one he has met can fire a gun quite like Neil.

He knows how to build near undetectable boundaries into a dream. Cobb and Miles had shown Eames how it was done. Though he'd never developed a knack for architecture, Eames can manage it, if crudely. McCormick rarely builds, their superiors (and, apparently, Professor Miles) think he's better suited to both be the dreamer and run point. When he does build, though, even if Eames knows he is looking for boundaries, he (and the five others now training with him) almost never find them.

The only way to collapse a dream for which McCormick provides the groundwork is to kill him. The other option Eames reluctantly learns to use against Segers and Nash is to convince them to kill themselves. This works easily enough on McCormick when the projections have turned against them ("C'mon, then, darling, let's jump!"). In any other situation, McCormick is too in control to be manipulated.

(If Eames wants to _cheat_, he can off himself and tip over the man's chair, but, well... The look on Neil's face never stops being _funny,_ but they both know it doesn't count, it's _cheating_.)

Out of all the soldiers that initially trained with Professor Miles and the Cobbs, Neil and Eames are the best. As a result, they do have to spend _some_ of their time tutoring Nash, Segers and the rest of them. It makes Eames think fondly of Will, and of Sgt. Bottony, for some reason. _Most_ of the time, though, their international triad of superiors team them up. Suddenly, Eames has something besides casual friends, superior officers, or baby soldiers: He has a partner.

A partner who never seems to look at Eames much, but always gives this tiny snort whenever Eames finds himself defaulting to joviality. A partner who never lets himself be fooled by any of Eames' forgeries.

(The one time Eames had been convinced he'd made McCormick believe his impersonation of Col. Meyers, it had slipped his mind that the Cobbs would be coming in. He'd waited for the session to end, inexplicably feeling worse than he'd ever felt in his life.

"Oh, chéri, I'm so sorry," Mal had said when she'd seen the look on his face, after. She had never forged without explicitly telling him who she would be again.)

Once they're put to work for real and each has to pay even more attention to the other, one of the first things Eames learns is that Neil hates to be out of control over when people touch him. There are training missions and, God, real missions so full of blood that Eames wants nothing more than to hug the nearest body in the aftermath (and one specific body, there's no use denying it). He never does, because he has little doubt that Neil would break his fingers, cut off his arms, ruin his knee.

He makes do. Segers and Nash are convinced they secretly hate one another, but those two are adequate at making plans and drawing buildings, not psychology. More often than not, they believe what they see:

Neil and Eames never pass up an opportunity to belittle the other's skills. Eames calls McCormick's perfect marksmanship scores "A sad sight to behold, darling," earns a Beretta filled with blanks for his trouble. During the week they spend on a base in Germany, everything Eames does "lässt etwas zu wünschen übrig". Miraculously, the beer Neil had gushed about for days beforehand gets spiked with orange juice. They constantly argue about architecture and strategy, the size of weapons Neil should employ and which people Eames should forge, the clothes he should have them wear. About the only thing they agree on is that McCormick is absolute shite at thinking up fake names.

It's nothing like Eames would have thought a friendship could be like at all, but it's real, it's real, it's real.

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Later, Eames can never quite decide whether it's an upside or a downside that no-one else – except maybe Mal, Dom and Miles – ever really knew his mind. Of one thing he is certain, though: If they had, Meyers might have thought twice about giving him and Neil the order, and if Haver had made him, what happened next would not have come as a surprise.

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Professor Miles is the first to go. He is the pioneer, the head researcher, the man who probably has more knowledge about the PASIV device and its capabilities than all the members of the military division devoted to it combined. ("An invaluable asset," Neil observes in hindsight, "but ultimately, with regard to General Haver's long term goal, a hindrance.") When he voices the desire to take a strictly real-world teaching position, the higher-ups don't try very hard to change his mind.

Dom and Mal are expecting a second child. They do most of their research in private and only come in anymore when Col. Meyers needs an urgent consultation.

McCormick and Eames are soldiers. They go where they are told, stake out the people they are told, invade the minds they are told. They are neither of them naïve men. In McCormick's words, "I never expected to feel comfortable with every mission I'd be ordered on."

There are things, however, that Eames' father never dirtied his hands with himself, things that Eames refuses to do. He counts himself very, very lucky indeed that it turns out there are limits for what Neil is prepared to do, as well.

Their superiors shaped them into the best. Losing them is entirely their own fault.

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There is little time to make a plan, to decide where to go, to make even a tacit agreement beyond _getting out_ to meet up again. The tactical drawbacks and advantages of making it together, of making it apart, pretty much cancel each other out.

When Eames holes up in London, it's been 52 hours since they were separated, and he has no way of knowing if McCormick made it out alive. Neil, like Eames, will have grabbed what he could get. Like Eames, he is good, the best, better even, perhaps, but –

None of these things mean that Eames is able to sleep. The knowledge of just how well McCormick can hold his own doesn't mean he's not pacing his hotel room, reliving all the times he has seen Neil killed in a dream.

Neil, who likely will never get to meet Eames' mother now, will never make a face when Eames says "Mother, brace yourself, this is my friend." Neil, who once told Eames he'd reinvented his whole life at the age of nineteen, who is not fond of his own name and who never protested Eames' calling him "darling". Neil, who unlike Meyers would not be fooled into the assumption that Eames is too smart to hide out anywhere near his mother's home, yet who is most likely across the globe by now and who –

Who has just calmly let himself into Eames' room.

"I'm impressed," he informs Eames, "by your invisibility when crossing borders." He sets down a suitcase with a care that can only be meant for a PASIV device. He shrugs off the jacket of a suit Eames didn't think existed in reality, all the while completely unconcerned about the gun levelled at him.

This is it, this is Eames' breaking point. It's too much, the lack of sleep, the sudden slide into a life of crime and _eleven years_. He barely remembers to put down his gun before he throws his arms around Neil, aware that he is risking everything, and holds on the way he has wanted to forever.

"Arthur," he breathes.

Arthur lets him.

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